Page 81 - Tafsir of surat at tawba repentance

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correct interpretation of the Qur’aan and Islam, and the reason why 19 was chosen
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is that 19 means “God is One,” which is the message of the Qur’aan.
Many Muslims at first received Khalifa’s theories with uncritical enthusiasm.
However, when more rigorous critics began checking his numbers, they found
numerous discrepancies and some outright fabrications in his data. His claims
were based on the number of times a given letter or word occurs in a given soorah
or group of soorahs. It was discovered that he would sometimes treat hamzahs
like alifs and sometimes he wouldn’t, depending on the totals he needed in a
given soorah to confirm his theory. Sometimes he counted letters that weren’t
there, sometimes he failed to count existing letters, sometimes he counted two
words as one, sometimes he added to the Qur’aanic text and sometimes he deleted
from it, all for the purpose of making the letter and word counts conform to his
theory. On top of that, his letter counts changed over time, depending on whether
he wanted to establish a pattern for a soorah by itself or as part of a group of
soorahs. When confronted with inconsistencies in his data, he began claiming that
certain verses had been inserted into the Qur’aan that did not belong there. After
this clear statement of disbelief he went on to claim knowledge of the exact date
of the Day of Judgment and eventually claimed prophethood for himself. He
attracted a group of followers in Tucson, Arizona, but his career was cut short
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when he was stabbed to death by an unknown assailant in 1990.

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Quran: Visual Presentation of The Miracle, pp.70-73, 243.
Note: This calculation is based on the Abjad system of numerology in which the letters of the
Arabic alphabet are given numerical values, a system borrowed from the Jewish mystical system
known as Kabbalah.
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See Mission to America, pp. 137-168. A detailed refutation of this theory can be found in my
book, The Quran’s Numerical Miracle: Hoax and Heresy.

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